The Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller. (Penguin edition)
- The play begins with stage directions such as information concerning the
music, lighting, costumes and the setting of the stage. These stage
directions help the director and actors interpret the text in the
perspective of turning it into a play that can be performed on stage.
- Furthermore, the stage directions help the reader experience the play as
if it were performed on stage; throughout the text, the stage directions
(textual excerpts in italics) provide the reader with the information
he/she needs to fully experience the literary text as a play.
- Moreover, the stage directions (which slightly remind us of descriptions
in novels and short stories) do express elements of the play which cannot
be represented through dialogue.
- Some stage directions, as is the case with the following passage, point
out the context and signification of the story. They may indicate some
levels of signification which may help us have access (through our
reading of the text) to a fuller picture of the play’s context and
signification.
“A melody is heard, played upon a flute. It is small and fine, telling of grass and
trees and the horizon. The curtain rises.” P. 7
- The play is introduced with a description of the sound, and effects, of a
music melody “played upon a flute”. This is a stage direction which
indicates the kind of music which is to be heard by the audience, just
before the events unfold on stage.
- However, the second sentence appears to be addressed to the reader
who is thus expected, or at least directed, to perceive the music sound as
“small and fine” and, especially, as “telling of grass and trees and the
horizon.” The reader of the play as a text is provided, thereby, with a
support which would help him/her decipher the signification of the
musical flute sound.
- Nevertheless, the reader is not really dictated a unique signification of
the music as meaning may vary from one reader to another. Indeed, it
remains within the reader’s power, literary competence, and even
emotional state during the reading activity to perceive the meaning that
corresponds to his/her interpretation of words such as “grass”, “trees”
and “horizon”.
- Obviously, every reader would actually have his/her own interpretation
of the words suggested in connection to the music sound; such an
interpretation would echo the reader’s cultural, linguistic and even
emotional experience with these words which would be bearing traces of
his/her environment and whatever suggestive input may reverberate
through his/her mind. In other words, the reader would eventually
respond to those words as a specific individual and as a social/cultural
being.
(For instance, two readers living or originating from respectively a rural
area and a city would not be stirred in the same way by the connotations
of the word “Grass”. The former whose experience of life is much closer
to the agricultural environment may connect the word “grass” with
fertility connected to rain, or with its utilitarian function as food for
domestic animals and thus to the production of wealth and well-being.
Whereas the individual from the city might primarily connect the word to
beauty; such a word may possibly help arouse in him/her romantic
feelings as his/her experience with “grass” may be limited to gardens or
occasional outings away from the city.
- However, the differences between the readings of the two individuals
originating from different regional, social or economic background may
only be valid to some extent. Obviously, people do have enough
common experience with the natural environment to share somewhat
similar readings of the word “grass” or “tree” or horizon (words which
are attached by the playwright to the musical sound introducing the
play). For instance, everybody is necessarily aware of the challenges
posed by the climate change and of the overwhelming impact which the
natural elements have on the future of the planet and on life. Therefore,
for every reader, the word “grass” may eventually be suggestive of
fertility, human welfare and beauty. Moreover, all men and women may
experience some sort of romantic sensations linked to “grass”, “trees”
and “horizon” in a way which reflects their belonging to a mediadominated and multi-cultural experience that may, eventually, enable
people around the world to have so much in common.
- It is quite significant that the play begins with a musical sound which is
suggestive of elements of nature with connotations of fertility,
abundance and beauty, in addition to the meanings of openness,
freedom and the availability of opportunities for men that is suggested
by the word “horizon”. The musical sound that is preceding the unfolding
of events would thus be suggestive of the positive aspirations and
dreams that are constitutive and influential emanations of the human
mind that is constantly reaching towards a better future, a better world.
That the play begins with such positive musical ‘notes’ only highlights
what has so tragically gone wrong in the life of Willy and his family as the
events would show, as “the curtain rises”.
“As more light appears, we see a solid vault of apartment houses around the
small, fragile-seeming home. An air of the dream clings to the place, a dream
rising out of reality.” P. 7
- “As the curtain rises”, light is shed on “the small, fragile-seeming home”
of Willy and his family which is surrounded by more affirmatively visible
“apartment houses”.
- The description of the LOMANS small house as being almost crushed by
other apartment houses seems to highlight a striking contrast between
the conditions of life of the LOMANS and the implied positive and open
image of nature that is connected to the music which precedes the rising
of the curtain.
- The Loman’s house is portrayed as a location of events which may have
nothing to do with the positive and open environment implied by the
“small and fine” tune of the melody. The audience and the reader are
introduced to a world which does not seem to be in harmony with the
world of freedom, opportunities and possibly positive experiences which
seem to be promised to other people but which appear to be denied to
the LOMANS whose scope of life is restrained within their “small, fragileseeming home”.
- The first sight of the Loman’s home, which is gloomily represented from
the outset of the play, seems to be suggestive of the quality of the life of
Willy the salesman and his family. The stage directions at the very
beginning of the play are pointing out to the fact that what is to be
unveiled on stage (throughout the text, for the reader of the play) may
have no link to the “grass”, “trees” and “horizon” which appear to be out
of reach for the salesman and his family.
- Only “an air of the dream clings to the place, a dream rising out of
reality.” The life of the LOMANS is constantly in discrepancy with reality;
Willy the salesman seems to have raised his children within an illusory
world that is out of touch with reality.
“WILLY: Why don’t you open a window in here, for God’s sake?
LINDA: [With infinite impatience] They’re all open dear.
WILLY: The way they boxed us in here. Bricks and windows, windows and
bricks.” P. 12
“WILLY [looking straight up]: Gotta break your neck to see a star in this yard.”
P. 41
- Willy appears to be suffocating within his house; he seems to be
perceiving himself as if he were crushed by the reality and circumstances
of his life.
- His complaint that the windows are closed is hushed by his wife’s
assertion that actually all the windows are open. His perception of his life
may be baseless; he may be suffering from a self-inflicted pain.
- The frustration, the closed space, the lack of air is only felt by Willy. He
feels suffocating under the burden of the conditions of life he is
experiencing; he feels crushed by ordeals. Willy has got the impression
that he does not have enough air, enough opportunities in his life; and
he is blaming Linda, in an attempt to blame anybody but himself for his
suffering.
- As he finds out that the windows are in fact all open, he shifts the blame
to the others who he says “boxed” him and his family in “bricks and
windows, windows and bricks.” If his wife is not responsible for his
suffering, then -it seems to him- it must be the others whom he
reproaches for the suffering he and his family are enduring!
- “Gotta break your neck to see a star in this yard,” Willy says. He is
aspiring to the sky, to the stars; he needs to escape from the difficult and
painful circumstances of his life. Just as the “horizon” appears to be
denied to him by the “apartment houses” surrounding his “fragileseeming home,” the stars are out of his reach.
- Willy sees himself as a victim; he perceives his ordeals as imposed by
some external elements or circumstances. He is far from considering that
his actions, his choices in life have any consequential impact on the
quality of his life.